Staid, stolid Herbert Hoover, national chairman of the Finnish Relief Fund, Inc., posed in Manhattan, gun in hand, with noted Finnish Runners Paavo Nurmi and Taisto Maid, to symbolize the start of a new drive (see cut}. The former President welcomed the athletes as "ambassadors of the greatest sporting nation in the world," alluded rhapsodically but tactlessly to Thermopylae (where Leonidas and his 300 Spartans put up a stout fight against the Persian hordes, were massacred to a man). "Flying Finn" Nurmi, once world's champion distance runner, and his protege Maki, breaker of track records, including Nurmi's, expressed confidence in their country's ultimate victory. They are on leave from war service to raise money in the U. S.

Because the Honorable Mrs. Geoffrey Bowlby, Woman of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth, developed mumps, the staff of Buckingham Palace went under medical observation for two weeks.

When the late Senator William E. Borah of Idaho gave up riding seven years ago, Washingtonians remarked: "Poor Borah, he can't afford a horse any longer." When he got a whopping bill for a prostate-gland operation, fellow Senators went to the doctor and got the bill halved. Surprised was the capital to learn that the Lion of Idaho had left $207,000 ($50,000 of it in thousand-dollar bills, $157,000 in bonds). Most surprised was Widow Mamie McConnell ("Little") Borah, who will not have to give up their Connecticut Avenue apartment.

Novelist Adela Rogers St. Johns, 45, hurrying from Manhattan to Manhasset, Long Island at 3 a. m., found herself half way home in a parked cab, the driver having stepped out for a moment. Next to her cab was another, likewise chauffeurless. Impulsively Miss St. Johns switched cabs, taking the cabby's seat. From the lunchwagon emerged two cabbies, one minus fare, the other minus cab. Miss St. Johns presently faced charges of driving a cab without an operator's license, passing a red light, driving while intoxicated. Novelist St. Johns' latest book, to be published Feb. 15, is entitled The Root of All Evil.

Richard Jaeckel, millionaire head of H. Jaeckel & Sons, Manhattan furriers, flumped out of a Manhattan apartment-house window, landed on a canopy ten stories below, bulged the canvas, dented three iron bars, cut his head and was "perfectly okay" to doctors who examined him.

Twelve 1940 debutantes met at a swank Manhattan saloon. Sipping tea, they cast votes for the season's "glamor boy," chose blond, rosy-cheeked Donald Munroe (see cut), who designs debs' clothes and is not in the Social Register.

Whether Hannibal, Mo., where Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) spent his boyhood, or Hartford, Conn., where he wrote his later works, should have the honor of first selling the Mark Twain commemorative stamp was under dispute in the House of Representatives. Zealous for Missouri's honor, Representative Joseph B. Shannon of Kansas City rose to remark that Connecticut could have the stamp all to itself, for Clemens was a disgrace to the Confederate colors. Of his brief military service--Shannon said it lasted four minutes after firing started in the border State--Mark Twain once wrote: "When I withdrew from those Missouri bumpkins and rustics, the Confederacy fell."

Flustered were Nazi authorities in German-occupied Poland when a 70-year-old Jew sought an exit visa to return to his native Latvia. His name was Adolf Hittler.

Ex-Lieut. Ivan Ivanovitch Poderzaj of the Yugoslav Army reserve emerged from Auburn N. Y. prison, his hands manacled, but still dapper in a smart tweed coat. He had served five years for bigamy, was scheduled for deportation. Somewhere was a woman who had divorced him. Somewhere was his second wife. What Manhattan's Missing Persons Bureau wanted to know was: Where is plain-looking, efficient Corporation Lawyer Agnes Tufverson, who married Poderzaj in the Little Church Around the Corner on Dec. 4, 1933? On a blizzardy night two weeks later, the Poderzajs drove to a pier, but returned to her Gramercy Park apartment, quarreling. Shortly after, Poderzaj sailed --alone--his baggage including his wife's trunks; never seen again was the third Mrs. Poderzaj. Brought back from Vienna, where he was found living with Wife No. 2, Poderzaj, suspected of worse things, was convicted of bigamy. In the Missing Persons Bureau Agnes Tufverson's case is still filed under "Unfound."

To the widow of Bruno Richard Hauptmann (see p. 47), Mrs. Anna Hauptmann, and six-year-old Son Manfried Hauptmann went an award of $25,500 in Bronx Supreme Court for damages suffered by Manfried in an automobile accident last spring.

Earl Browder, whose four-year jail sentence *; does not keep him from running for Congress, made a vigorous campaign for a House seat in the 14th (East Side) district of Manhattan. Running against M. Michael Edelstein, Democrat, and Louis J. Lefkowitz, Republican, Communist Browder sang The Star Spangled Banner as bravely as his opponents (see cut) when all three met at a political rally.

* He is out on $7,500 bail, pending appeal.

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